Tiverton recall proponents celebrate as Coulter, Katz leave council

Marcia Pobzeznik Daily News staff writer

Friday

Oct 11, 2019 at 2:25 PMOct 11, 2019 at 3:20 PM

Tuesday Town Council meeting canceled as new councilors wait for recall to be certified.

TIVERTON — “They got their number,” Town Council President Robert Coulter said Friday morning after the successful recall Thursday of himself and Vice President Justin Katz by a group of townspeople upset with their leadership.

The successful recall is a first for the town.

Coulter’s last act as president was Friday afternoon, when he canceled Tuesday’s regularly scheduled town council meeting.

“I’d prefer to defer the meeting until the new council is seated,” said Coulter said, who added he would have held the meeting if there were any pressing matters that needed to be addressed.

Town Clerk Nancy Mello said there were no pressing matters, as far as she was concerned.

The next top vote-getters in last November’s election are eligible to take the two seats lost by Coulter and Katz. Mello said John Edwards IV, a former council vice president, said he would be willing to serve, but she has not yet been in contact with Stephen Clarke.

Coulter noted he campaigned for Clarke in the last election. “It was just enough to flip the majority” on the council, Coulter said of a seat being taken by Edwards IV.

The recall election can’t be certified until at least Thursday because of a seven-day appeal period, Mello said she was told by the state Board of Elections.

Katz said Thursday afternoon, while the polls were still open, if he and Coulter lost their seats it would be “awkward” to preside over another meeting and take any votes. He also noted the turnout at the polls, where he stood alongside supporters with signs asking people not to vote, “was steadier than I would have liked it to be.”

Katz confirmed Friday afternoon he has started campaigning for the next council election in November 2020 and is putting together a slate of candidates to run for Town Council. He blamed their loss Thursday on the "statewide machine” of political action committees, including the teachers’ union, that sent out numerous mailers and others who put “bunches of political talk and lies,” on social media to get people out to vote.

Nearly 1,600 voters said "yes" to recalling the two, while 80 voted "no."’

A minimum of 940 voters had to cast ballots for the recall of Katz and 808 for the recall of Coulter in order to meet requirements of the town charter that states at least 40% of the votes that elected a town official had to be cast in a recall, with a majority yes or no deciding their fate.

William McLaughlin, a losing council candidate in last November’s election, started the recall process in April after the majority of four on the seven-member council, led by Coulter and Katz, did not follow the will of the people, he said. Among the decisions, McLaughlin said, was voting to hire a town solicitor with connections to Katz, and putting their supporters on boards and commissions over others who had more experience.

Designating the town a Second Amendment Sanctuary town upset many residents who were against the move, and said they should have been spending time on issues of much more importance to the townspeople.

“I knew at 1 o’clock,” they would be recalled, McLaughlin said Thursday afternoon as he made the rounds of all four polling places in town.

“The vote count at that time was enough,” to make the recall a success, he said. “They told their people to stay home,” McLaughlin said of Coulter and Katz, members of the Tiverton Taxpayers Association who urged their supporters not to vote.

“People have become engaged in their town. They realized they had to care about their town and get involved,” McLaughlin said of the turnout.

“The town basically said, ‘You’re doing this for you. You’re not doing this for the town,'" Tom Buchanan, one of the organizers of the recall, said of some of the council majority’s actions over the past months.

Voter Michelle Reffelt, when asked why she voted in the recall, said she was “not happy that two councilors took it upon themselves to run the town. I also don’t like how our town solicitor was brought in,” she said. Reffelt took exception to Katz “acting like the mayor of Tiverton, and he’s not. We have a Town Council.”

Katz responded Friday the mayor designation “was one of the talking points of the other side. The fact of the matter is, we worked together on a lot of things,” he said of all seven members of the council.

“I’m disappointed,” Coulter said of the outcome, “but I am glad, too, that the people we asked to stay home did. Our supporters got the message. We asked them to not participate in this sham.” He did note that fewer people voted to recall them than voted to elect them last November.

The local Board of Canvassers met Friday morning to count seven provisional ballots cast by people who had varying reasons for not voting a regular ballot. Unofficial totals, including those ballots, will be known by the end of Friday, Mello said. The unofficial totals Thursday night were 1,594 "yes" votes to recall Coulter and 75 "no" votes; and 1,589 "yes" votes to recall Katz, and 80 "no" votes.

Asking people not to vote did not sit well with many.

David Paull, an organizer of the recall, said he talked to a couple who “didn’t feel they had a horse in this race, but when they were told not to vote they said, ‘We’re voting and voting yes,'" he said.

"It was that ‘just don’t vote’ that got people to vote,'” Mello said.

One woman who voted and then spent hours making sure her husband could vote was deemed "most patriotic” by poll workers at Town Hall.

Poll worker Ginger Lacy said an elderly woman who voted a ballot said her husband wanted to vote but ended up in the hospital the night before. She was given an emergency ballot application and drove it to the hospital for her husband to sign, returned it to Town Hall where the signature was checked with the statewide database, then given a ballot for him to mark. She drove back to the hospital with the ballot and then returned it to Town Hall.

“That’s a lot of running around,” Jeanne Spencer, a canvassing clerk, said of getting that one vote.

mpobzeznik@newportri.com

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